Hirohito's Revenge

Now that I am back in Tokyo, I had hoped to write about my visits to Hiroshima and Kyoto, focusing on how moving the monuments in Hiroshima were and how strange it was to spend Thanksgiving in Kyoto, which is a beautiful city. Unfortunately, the day after I arrived in Kyoto, I was struck by the Japanese version of Montezuma's Revenge, which I am calling Hirohito's Revenge. I don't know if it was the suspicious ham, lettuce, and mayo sandwich I had at the Hiroshima train station while waiting for my train (when the fuck am I going to learn not to eat mayo anything, particularly at a train station?), or more likely, the sushi P. and I had at this mom and pop place our first night in Kyoto. We were hungry, tired, and walking around aimlessly in the Goin district, and I finally said, "let's just eat here." Big mistake. I had the weirdest vibe when the food came and we started eating. There were only two other people in the entire place, though we showed up at 10:00 p.m., and something just seemed amiss. Maybe it was the fact that the "restaurant" appeared to be an extension of a family kitchen with chairs arranged around a long table.

The next day, while we were visiting some of the most beautiful temples and sites in Kyoto, my head felt like a watermelon being squeezed in a vise, and I won't even bother to tell you how my stomach and the rest of me felt. Notwithstanding my sorry condition, I tried to see as much as possible before desperately running to the bathroom when we (finally!) returned to the hotel at the end of the day. To make matters worse, I was in such a hurry to reach my destination, I nearly scalped myself getting out of the taxi, whacking my forehead mercilessly on the roof of the cab, so hard I literally saw stars for a second, like in one of those old Tom and Jerry cartoons. I felt a zing go from the top of my cranium all the way down to the base of my neck, and there it throbbed for the next ten minutes.

Strangely, while I was wishing Calgon would take me away, P. was perfectly fine. In fact, I felt badly that he had to listen to my crabby mood all day and then be stuck not doing anything on our last night in Kyoto. I couldn't understand why I had gotten sick and he hadn't. We had eaten at the same place and had ingested literally the same food. That's what led me to believe it must have been the Hiroshima sandwich that got me. That is, until our return to Tokyo tonight, when P. told me that he had thrown up twice -- once on the train and once when he got home. (We took different trains). And about two hours ago, I was able to confirm personally that P. too has been stricken by Hirohito's Revenge. I don't understand why Hirohito visited P. a day later, but I guess the Emperor arrives when he pleases. I hope he leaves soon because I'm still feeling ill, and I have less than two days before I have to get on a 12 hour flight back home. I don't even want to contemplate the agony of being on a long flight when I'm feeling like this.

(Oh... there goes P. again. Damn, he is much worse off than me. Poor guy.)

Ah... the vagaries of traveling.

In an effort to end this on a positive note, I will say that Hiroshima was surreal for me. It was dizzying to be in a city that was totally destroyed by a nuclear bomb, by my country. The bomb killed 140,000 people near instantly, and many more thousands later. To be on the same ground where such devastation occurred was very difficult for my mind to comprehend, particularly because Hiroshima is so built up now, that it looks like any other modern city. I visited the Peace Memorial and the numerous monuments in the park nearby. All of them are beautifully done. With all the monuments and the long mall and river, it had the feel of Washington D.C.

I stood at the REAL Ground Zero, the spot where the Enola Gay's bomb fell and detonated 580 meters above the ground. It's on a "T" bridge located not too far from the A-Dome that you have probably seen in pictures. (I took about 100 pictures of it myself.) In the museums, I learned that August 6, 1945 was a very clear, very sunny day. It reminded me of 9/11. In fact, that's one of the reasons the day was chosen, so the bombers would have a clear visual of their unfortunate target. Hiroshima was bombed without any warning of what was coming, much like Pearl Harbor.

I read the stories of the people, including many children, who died horrific deaths. Many of the stories were told by their parents or relatives who happened to live far away from the elementary school that was located very close to Ground Zero. Some of the accounts told of how people who survived the immediate impact cried out for water, their skin literally melting off their bodies. Some of them, including many children dove into Hiroshima's six rivers in an effort to find some kind of relief. Most of them died. And this was before the fires and the radioactive black rain that fell later, which eventually killed its own share of people.

Hearing about all of this felt like listening to a story about a visit to hell. And when you see the pictures of the devastation that followed the detonation, it sure looked a lot like hell. But today, if you didn't know about Hiroshima's history, you would never imagine that it had once been destroyed with a nuclear bomb. It's built up, modern, and vibrant. Full of people. Nice hotels, shopping malls. This only added to the surreality of the experience for me. I don't know what I expected, but it was kind of shocking to see what Hiroshima looks like today. Though it was emotionally exhausting, my visit to Hiroshima is something I will remember for the rest of my life.

Kyoto was a very cool city, and it was literally packed with tourists because Thanksgiving is also a Japanese work holiday. The temples were stunning and unlike anything I've ever seen before. It felt much different than Tokyo, less modern in places and more like what you would imagine old Japan must have been like. One temple is covered all in gold plate; another required a long walk up a mountainside; and another held a famous rock garden where you are supposed to contemplate the meaning of the arrangement of the rocks contained therein. If there hadn't been so many damn tourists, I might have had some success. Unlike a lot of places I have visited, the sites in Kyoto allow you to put yourself mentally in that place and time because to some extent they are a bit set off from the busy city itself. And even downtown in the city, some of the architecture still looks like it is from two or three centuries ago. Just beautiful.

Well, I'm going to get some water now and continue trying to push Hirohito out the door (no pun or metaphor intended). He's overstayed his welcome.